Edinburgh
Harry told people he’d moved to Edinburgh for work. He didn’t mention the silence, or the fight, or the fact that he’d stood in the middle of a living room that used to feel like home and said, “I can’t do this any more,” even though he still wasn’t sure what “this” meant.
He needed a change. A reset. Somewhere colder, lonelier, quieter, where he could disappear into the crowd and become no one in particular. Edinburgh delivered.
He’d chosen it deliberately: too far for casual visits from friends, too close to seem dramatic. He could pretend he might pop back for the weekend, knowing full well he wouldn’t—not to that city, that street or those memories.
He’d left his old life in boxes he didn’t properly unpack—boxes he taped shut again almost immediately. By mutual agreement, he liked to think. He did all the things you were supposed to do after a fresh start. Tried oat milk. Joined a gym he went to once. Bought a few plants and watched all but one die, as if they resented being dragged into his mess.
His type, historically, had been men who looked straight and acted straighter. Men who made him do all the emotional labour so they could pretend none of it mattered. Men who kept their hands in their pockets and their apologies vague. Men who kissed like they were doing him a favour. He’d learnt the hard way that being wanted wasn’t the same as being chosen.
Emma called most days, worrying about him in that efficient, exasperated way only a best friend of two decades could manage. The week before, she’d said, “If you don’t sort yourself out, you’ll go crawling back to your last mistake.” Calling Josh his last mistake was generous. He wasn’t the only one. Just the most recent. Besides, she hadn’t been there that night.
His other best friend hadn’t spoken to him in over three years. That silence carried its own weight: heavy, personal, undignified. He didn’t talk about it. Still, he was fine. Fine enough. He didn’t get emotional over supermarket meal deals for two now. But sometimes, when a stranger looked at him like they might mean it, when a joke landed exactly right, when a small kindness caught him off guard, he still felt it. That flicker of longing.
“Hey, pal—you’re up.”
The voice pulled him back into the world. He blinked. He’d been standing in the Starbucks queue, looking up at the menu like it might offer him an exit. The smell of coffee and steamed milk hung in the air, and someone behind him sighed loudly, performatively: Edinburgh impatience dressed up as politeness.
He turned towards the voice. A police officer stood beside him, broad-shouldered, with stubble rough along his jaw and tiredness around his eyes. A voice came low through the radio at his shoulder. The officer listened for half a second, then looked back.
For one stupid moment, Harry thought he knew him from Nottingham. His stomach tightened before the officer spoke and the accent broke the resemblance. Harry knew he was wrong. Relief came first. Embarrassment followed.
The officer nodded towards the counter. “You’re going to miss your wee turn.”
Harry followed his nod to the gap he’d somehow failed to notice. “Oh—right. Sorry.” He stepped forward to order. “Oat flat white, please.”
“Name?” the barista asked.
There was a faint trace of eyeliner, subtle but visible if you were paying attention, and a small Pride pin on his apron. He looked like he knew exactly what suited him and didn’t care who noticed.
“Harry.”
“As in the prince?” the barista said. “You a spare too?”
Harry let out a laugh that sounded wrong. Too quick. Too thin. “Something like that.”
“Got you.” The barista wrote it neatly on the cup, then looked up again, his gaze holding for a beat before he slid the card machine forward. “Card when you’re ready.”
Harry tapped his card. Two short beeps. He tried again, holding it against the machine until it chirped, then stepped away from the counter and opened his wallet to put it back. As he moved towards the collection end, he glanced around, checking too late whether anyone had noticed.
The officer was waiting there, listening to something low through the radio. Harry looked at him. For a second, he was back in the wrong decade, waiting for a face to smile at him. Or laugh.
The card caught against the edge of the slot and slipped from his fingers.
“Hey, you dropped your card.”
The officer bent at the same time as Harry, and their heads knocked together—not hard, but enough to make them both jerk back.
“Jesus.” The officer straightened, rubbing his forehead. “Assaulting a police officer before you’ve even had your coffee?”
Harry stood and gave a nervous laugh. “I think technically you assaulted me.”
“Aye, that’ll hold up in court.” He smiled and handed the card back.
Harry pushed it into his wallet properly this time.
“Oh, and—” The officer gestured with two fingers towards Harry’s chest. “You’ve got a wee bit of toothpaste on you.”
Harry looked down. A creamy-white streak ran down the front of his hoodie like a flag of surrender.
“Oh. Brilliant.” He rubbed at it, only making it worse. “Didn’t notice.”
A voice crackled through the radio, and his attention shifted immediately. “Aye, received.” He picked up his drink, then looked back at Harry. “Have a good one.”
He walked away, speaking into the radio at his shoulder.
Harry stood with his wallet in his hand and the toothpaste smeared further across his hoodie.
“Harry—oat flat white,” the barista called.
Harry stepped forward, putting his wallet in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said.
“Careful—it’s hot, mind,” the barista said.
Harry nodded, took the cup, and threaded himself past the tables and the queue, fixed on the door like it was a task he could complete if he didn’t think about it. The cold hit clean and sharp, like a reset. He took a sip and burnt his tongue, swearing under his breath.
He walked the long way home, one hand wrapped round the takeaway cup, the other buried in his pocket against the cold. When he reached the Links, the air smelled of damp grass and fallen leaves. A couple on a bench argued quietly, then kissed, ordinary and unashamed. Harry looked away and kept walking.
By the time Harry got back to the flat, nothing had changed, which felt rude somehow. The flat was deliberately neutral. The sofa had the energy of a polite stranger who’d never ask difficult questions. The walls were the colour of wet paper. There were no photos, just wall art some designer had picked: expensive-looking, carefully forgettable.
He shut the door, took off his coat and caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror. The toothpaste was still there, dried pale across the front of his hoodie.
“Idiot,” he muttered.
He pulled the hoodie off over his head and threw it towards the bedroom. It hit the doorframe and dropped in a heap on the floor. Good enough. He carried the empty takeaway cup through to the kitchen and left it on the counter.
He was halfway through the ready meal and his first glass of wine when Emma messaged.
Emma: How was your Sunday?
He looked at the question while Hugh Grant made a mess of something in the background. The film had reached the point where everyone seemed to be attending either a wedding or a funeral, which seemed efficient. His wine was on the floor beside the sofa, close enough to reach without committing to getting up.
Harry: Nice quiet one. Got out for a bit too.
He sent it before he could make it weird. The reply came back almost at once.
Emma: Good. You needed that x
Harry put the phone face down on the cushion. He had needed one. That part was true. He’d bought dinner, poured wine into an actual glass, and made it through the day without incident. By his standards, a perfectly decent Sunday.
The meal had looked more convincing on the cardboard sleeve. It was something involving chicken, pasta and a sauce that had formed a skin around the edges, but it was hot and required no washing up beyond the fork. He ate another mouthful and let the film carry on without him for a while.
The film had gone quiet—some scene in a church—when he heard a soft, wet tap from the kitchen. He muted the telly and listened. Another came, then another, quicker this time. He looked towards the doorway, though he couldn’t see the kitchen from where he was sitting. Then came the thin, steady sound of running water. He set the meal on the coffee table and went through.
The saucer beneath the glazed pot was overflowing onto the shelf in a narrow stream. It had reached the floor, where the corner of the cardboard box marked WINTER had absorbed it and gone dark.
“Brilliant.”
He lifted the brown plastic pot out. The outer pot was half full. Apparently, he had watered the thing as if trying to drown it. The plant itself appeared neither grateful nor surprised.
He put the plant in the sink and crouched beside the box. The cardboard gave slightly beneath his fingers. He pulled it away from under the shelf before the wet could spread any further, then peeled back the tape.
Jumpers, mostly, with a couple of scarves and the thick socks he only ever remembered owning once the weather had improved. Everything smelled faintly of damp cardboard and clothes shut away for months. He pulled out a navy jumper, then two grey ones—apparently Nottingham Harry had believed in variety only as a concept—and folded them on the counter while the water crept further across the floor. Beneath a scarf, he found the hoodie.
He held it by the shoulder. Near one cuff was a pale mark where bleach had taken the colour out of the fabric, a small uneven splash he recognised immediately. He’d done that. He couldn’t remember what he’d been cleaning, only the sharp smell, the panic afterwards, and Josh looking at the sleeve like Harry had ruined something important on purpose.
It had probably been one of those evenings. Harry apologising too quickly. Josh going quiet in that deliberate way that made the whole flat rearrange itself around his mood. Harry deciding, somewhere between the bleach and the silence, that he was tired of living like an inconvenience. He’d told himself it wouldn’t matter tomorrow.
He brought the hoodie closer and smelled it. Fabric softener. Nothing else. He stayed there for a moment, crouched on the kitchen floor with the hoodie in his hands.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered.
He dropped it on the floor beside him, then put the jumpers back, followed by the scarf and the socks, leaving the hoodie where it was. Not forgotten. Not exactly. He closed the flaps. The wet corner would dry or it wouldn’t. Either way, it could wait until tomorrow. He stood and nudged the box out from under the shelf with his foot. That was when he saw the water had reached the edge of the skirting board.
He looked around for the tea towel, then down at the hoodie on the floor. He crouched, picked it up and used it to mop up the water, pressing it hard into the puddle. When he was done, the hoodie was damp and darker in places.
He carried it to the bin, opened the lid and dropped it in. It landed badly, one sleeve caught over the edge, the bleach mark exposed, and he stood there for a second before pushing it down.
The empty takeaway cup was still on the counter. He picked it up, then noticed something written beneath his name, the ink slightly smudged. A phone number. He stared at it. For a second, he imagined keeping it. Sending a message. Letting it become something before he knew whether it was anything at all.
Then he looked into the open bin at the damp hoodie inside. He dropped the cup in after it and closed the lid.
He went back to the sofa, picked up his wine and settled into the cushions.
Not a bad Sunday, really.
